Clinton Email Scandal: She Knew The Security Risk But Took It Anyway

Corruption: Hillary Clinton's emails show that even though she'd been warned that using a smartphone for State Department communications was a security risk, she did it anyway. She can't be trusted.

Soon after Clinton took office as secretary of state in 2009, the National Security Agency rejected her request to use a smartphone to conduct government business. She wanted a "BlackBerry-like" device, the Associated Press reported, similar to the one provided to President Obama. According to emails obtained by Judicial Watch, which has filed a number of lawsuits to uncover what Clinton tried to cover up as secretary, she had become "hooked" on using a BlackBerry like the one she used during the 2008 presidential race to keep up with her emails. She did not want to use a secure laptop or desktop computer to access email while secretary.

Eventually, Cheryl Mills, Clinton's chief of staff, and seven senior State Department staffers met with five NSA security experts. The AP reports that the State Department's NSA liaison "expressed concerns about security vulnerabilities inherent with using BlackBerry devices for secure communications or in secure areas."

Yet "the following month, in March 2009, Clinton began using private email accounts accessed through her BlackBerry to exchange messages with her top aides," even though, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton says, "Clinton knew her BlackBerry wasn't secure."

Naturally, none of this has pleased the NSA. John R. Schindler, a former national security affairs professor at the Naval War College, wrote Friday in the Observer about the NSA's "important beef" with Clinton. Schindler said that one retired senior NSA official who recalled the stir over the Blackberry told him it was "the usual Clinton prima donna stuff . . . the whole 'rules are for other people' act that I remembered from the '90s.”

This former NSA official wonders just what it was that Clinton did not want "put on a government system, where security people might see it." As well he should. It's quite clear she wanted to conduct business in the dark.

The NSA also has to be upset with Clinton crony Sidney Blumenthal sending sensitive information to Clinton's personal account. Schindler said the contents of a June 2011 message that Blumenthal emailed to Clinton were "indeed derived from NSA intelligence." Somehow he got his hands on material he should not have had access to.

"This information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified top secret/special intelligence," and at least one of the reports was "extraordinarily sensitive," writes Schindler.

And it was out there for just about anyone with even modest hacking skills to look at -- and sell to foreign spies -- since it was sent to Clinton's nonsecure personal email account.

Clinton has much to answer for as she campaigns during what she believes is her inevitable march to the Democratic presidential nomination. But the media don't care too deeply about her email scandal and neither does her opponent Bernie Sanders.

There is, however, one group that is willing, maybe even eager, to put her on the record: Judicial Watch. It is scheduled in April to depose Bryan Pagliano, the director of information technology for Clinton's 2008 campaign who installed her email system, and is saying that Clinton might be questioned, as well.

There is no reason she shouldn't be. She's a private citizen and her run for office bestows no legal privilege on her. Yet she surely thinks she's above the law, and has for decades. We hope that when the FBI, NSA, Judicial Watch and the federal courts are done with her, she will realize that she isn't -- and so will the voters.

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